In the beginning was the code

Are selfies really real?

Who's the I behind the Pod?

What's the G in OMG?

Is it Gosh or is it God?

Do we float in cyberspace,

Random bits and bytes and blogs,

Are we acronyms and coding

Amidst pics of cats and dogs?

As we peer into your Facebook,

What's the status to your Status?

Has it gone the way of MySpace?

Do you know but won't update us?

In the far far distant future,

Our accounts long since deleted,

Will someone leave a comment?

Will we be (perhaps) retweeted?

We are pixels built on pixels,

But still I hear the call

To find that perfect YouTube

That will explain it all.

On this day in history....

This day, 30 November 2015, marks the 100th anniversary of the official passing of the Women's Mansplaination Act in Australian Parliament. This important bill gave women everywhere the right to listen to men giving fulsome explanations of things they already knew. Isn't history great?

Rumours that Malcolm Turnbull is actually drinking cocktails of artistic tears out of a golden diamond-encrusted beaker have been unsubstantiated

WTFF News - Australian Government announces the creation of a new fund of artistic tears
The Australian Government has announced the creation of a new fund of artists' tears, in an attempt to boost their support amongst the artistic community

"The National Endowment of Artistic Grief, or NEAG, will revitalise the artistic community, providing them with plentiful supply of delicious grief, torment, agony, and pain for the years ahead", said Mr Turnbull in a statement yesterday, adding that "this precious chalice of depression, desolation and despair showed that the Coalition government was the true friend of artists in Australia."

However, Bill Shorten hit back this morning, claiming that "this fresh supply of artistic tears is taking away from the pre-existing Australian Foundation of Artistic Sadness, and proves that once again the conservatives are ripping off valuable artists." He added: "If elected, a Labor Government will ensure all Artistic Tear stocks are returned to AFAS, along with the addition of fresh grants of sadness for our long-suffering artists."

The statements by Turnbull and Shorten were met with dismay by the artistic community, with artistic leaders sobbing plentifully when asked for responses to the new National Endowment of Artistic Grief policy.

"It's not enough!" claimed one artist.
"It's just too much!" claimed another.
A third artist asked for handkerchiefs.
A fourth artist said: "These are not true Australian tears. I have it on good authority that these tears were made in European sweatshops by underpaid artists. Why aren't we paying Australian artists to cry on our behalf?" before bursting into presumably demonstrative tears.

Rumours that Malcolm Turnbull is actually drinking cocktails of artistic tears out of a golden diamond-encrusted beaker have been unsubstantiated at time of going to press.

However, when contacted by the media, he did make slobbering sounds while licking his lips.

Punkt!

One iott or one tytle of the lawe shall not scape. - Matthew 5:18, the Tindale Bible 

"I like the idea of a whole class devoted to dots", I said in my German class the other day. Everyone laughed; they all thought I was joking. (I usually am). Actually, I was being serious. (I usually am. It's possible to be both).

It often comes down to a matter of the little dots and spots around the letters and numbers, I find. Every alphabet must have a use for those teeny-weeny dots that hover above or under or around the other letters, whether they be a full stop or an accent or a dash between the letters or those familiar spots hanging above the lower case 'i' and the lower case 'j'. 'Tittle' is the lovely technical term for these dots. What business do they have, defying gravity above their letters, anyway? (What business do I have, for that matter, thinking of the letters as standing upright? Books are often meant to be held more horizontally - surely the letters are depicted as horizontal?) And then there are the little dots below the question mark and the exclamation mark - ought we to expect them to fall away or to one day be helplessly crushed beneath the weight of the respective marks as gravity asserts itself?

It is possible to derive an endless amount of amusement from a couple of little dots on a page or a screen; however, the Germans seem to do it better than most of us. Not only do they have all the usual full stops and hyphens and tittles, but they have the semi-inverse colon, better known to you and me as the umlaut. You know, those two little dots above most of the vowels. My enthusiasm for umlauts is immoderate in the extreme, even though I cannot ever quite remember when to put them in*; however, it's in the matter of numbers that they manage to really confuse everyone.

Whereas we would signify a decimal place with a sensible dot (period, full stop, tittle-without-a-letter-to-bother-it, or, in German, punkt), the practice in die Deutschland is to pop in a comma in that same spot. Meanwhile, in the middle of a long number, where we would tend to place in a comma before every three digits for clarity, the Germans mostly don't bother - either spacing the digits apart, or putting in a - well, I'm afraid to say, a punkt. Got that? So where we use a full stop, the Germans use a comma, and where we use a comma, the Germans use a space or a full stop. Oh, and another substitute I hadn't been aware of: our symbol for division - '÷' - which Google informs me is known as 'the obelus' - is replaced, in German, by a colon (or a retrograde umlaut, or a retrograde-semi-inverse-colon**).

Full stops! Commas! Umlauts! Colons! Periods! What with all these blots and blobs and dots and dashes splotting and clashing into one another, it's a wonder we don't see them getting into one another's way and the punkts start groping the tittles and an asterisk and obelus get into the magic potion again and begin causing merry havoc in the marginalia. Anyway, that's about all I wanted to say, but while we're on the subject of dots and dashes and punctuation, can I just put in a word for spotty animals? There's nothing nicer than a well-punctuated animal, I find, and did you know, it's not just spotty coats many animals have; both our cats have a dot in the roof of their mouth. Occasionally when they yawn I see it, and I can't help but murmur to myself: "Hmm, yes. Good punkt. Very good punkt indeed."

*I suppose I could just start off by putting a couple of umlauts at the top of the page and letting the letters come in later. 

**I may have made some of these terms up, but they are totally accurate. 

College students denounce college as cultural appropriation

YALE, MONDAY: College students in the US have denounced college as cultural appropriation, taking to the streets to protest against themselves.

"We hereby call on ourselves to denounce ourselves for appropriating this ancient Latvian tradition and thus perpetuating systemic racism," said the spokesman for the students, before the protesters renounced college immediately.

The protesters went on to protest thought as cultural appropriation, and when asked how exactly it was cultural appropriation, they replied, "I don't know, I gave up thinking ages ago."

An argument against self-expression

An argument against self-expression

It's time for keeping out of touch.

It's time for saying less. 

To say too little, not too much - 

Repress, repress, repress. 

"Let's talk about it." Or: let's not. 

Besides, I must confess

I'm never sure what feeling's what - 

Repress, repress, repress. 

Don't talk. You'll give too much away.

Let other people guess - 

You think too deep for words, they'll say - 

Repress, repress, repress. 

Maintain your peace. Be almost still,

A gentle soft caress

Of fair winds on a distant hill - 

Repress. 

Prior

Maddy Prior.

Prior Maddy.

Maddy, priory.

Etiquette for dogs

Big dogs: when sniffing a little dog's bum, allow a grace period so the little dog has time to swirl around and give your own bum the appreciation it deserves.

Contra Star Wars

Oh, sod off with your Dark Side and your Light Saber and your Yoda says something profound with customary mixed up syntax. Sod off with your epic mythologising of deep import and your important myths of epic significance and your storm-bloody-troopers. Whatever happened to Star Wars: the missing years? EPISODE  1003: Luke Has A Really Bad Cold And Uses The Force To Make A Cup Of Coffee Because He Can't Be Arsed Getting Out Of Bed. EPISODE 2406: A Stormtrooper Is Really Pissed Off Because He Hears This Persistent John Williams Theme In His Ears Every Time He Marches Down The Corridors Of His Imperial Craft To Go To The Toilet. EPISODE 991: That Alien Jazz Band That Plays That One Time Are Invited To Play A Set On A New Death Star That Has Just Been Opened As A Tourist Resort But They Have To Turn It Down Because They Have To See The Doctor On That Date.  No, I have no interest in seeing the latest episode in which the Empire Strikes Back Yet Again and things will probably all end alright anyway. Yes, I'll probably end up seeing the stupid thing anyway. Baaaaaarghh!

A medicament predicament

Just how do you make a chicken eat medicine*? Normally it's easy to feed a chicken; they eat anything. Though strangely, an exception to this rule develops when you feed them medicine: they won't eat that. It's not that they dislike the taste of the medicine - they'll take a few pecks and then leave it aside.

So, you mix the medicine in with anything. All of a sudden, the chicken develops another strange aversion: they'll eat anything they're not supposed to eat.

A solution presents itself: why not mix the medicine in with anything they're not supposed to eat? There's plenty of that around the house, from cat biscuits through to bowls of breakfast porridge. So you mix the medicine in with that. And then, contrarily, the chicken will develop a taste for anything that happens to be beside anything they're not supposed to eat. (Perhaps it is terrified by the paradox of being presented with anything they're not supposed to eat and then being allowed to eat it.)

Then, another possibility arises: company! There's nothing that excites a chicken to eat better than the company of others. In that company, the chicken will quickly scramble to eat as much as it can, excited in greed by the rapacity of its friends, and envious of any small crumb that should make its way down their beak. So, you call all the chickens to the back door, and turn the chicken out with its flock and lay down the medicine there. A fluster of feathers descends upon the food and you observe the results with pleasure. Surely, now the chook will digest its prescribed elixir! And with dismay you watch every chook but the chook you want to eat the medicine, actually eat the medicine.

I ask you. Chickens. They're almost as contrary as bloggers.

*It's just a calcium supplement to ensure sturdy eggs, chicken lovers! Nothing to worry about! 

The Adamite mystery

Researchers create blackest material ever made (Phys.org)—A team of researchers at King Abdulla University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia has made the blackest material ever created by human beings.

It doesn't say in the story, but the blackest material ever made has an Antipodean link: it came from the fibres of the clothes of our very own Phillip Adams.

It has long been known that the monochromatic vests of the mellifluous radio presenter and newspaper writer suck all light, heat, and hope into their gravitational vortex. They are woven together from the finest strands made out of the sorrows of true devotees to the Socialist cause, and have been studied for years by scientists as one of the great wonders of nature. Astrophysicists have expressed especial interest in the inklike nature of Adams' clothing, as they seem to display a rare local case of the galactic phenomena known as 'Black Holes'; however, it is feared that if anyone got too close to them, they might go beyond the Event Horizon and be sucked into their naked singularity, and no-one wants that. It is rumoured that this is how Harold Holt got lost.

At any rate, Adams' stygian garments are a true wonder of nature and a site of national beauty, right up there with that big hole in the ground they made a horror film about once, and the medium-sized rock where that film about the schoolgirls disappearing happened, and that largish-sized desert in the middle of it all where those two explorers died. Advance Australia Obsidian!

Do not look into his eyes, or all is lost.

Hi-tech home employment

In my house, I have two cardboard boxes in two separate rooms. Occasionally, I will scribble something on a piece of paper and put it in one box. Then, I will rush into the other room, take a piece of paper out of the second box, and scribble the same thing on that.

I like to call these boxes my Faux Machines.

I failed the Clerihew class

Edith Sitwell
Didn't.

The adventures of Frau Umlaut and the bad case of diaresis

It's the first night of German language classes, and we are all about to learn the two principal grammatical cases of the language, the Awkward, and the Incorrect. The basic set up is this: a bunch of students sit in the room and wonder who the hell everyone else is and why are they here again; and then they get up and attempt to communicate this to one another in a language that nobody understands at all.

There is a teacher who, for the purposes of this blog post, I will call Frau Umlaut. Her part is simple: she just stands up there and introduces the topic for the day in the aforementioned language, which, as also aforementioned, nobody understands. Sometimes she compliments or criticises students in the same language, but how could we tell which is which? And there is a football (why a football?) which we all toss around in a big circle, and take turns introducing ourselves while we hold it. Hello, I am called good! My name is Melbourne, and I live in Tim! And you?

That was three weeks ago. (See? in the past but I was talking in the present tense - I totally do know grammar!). But by far my favourite moment in German classes happened two weeks ago, when, at the end of another exercise in the Awkward and Incorrect cases, another student who I'll call Ess-Tset and I passed accidentally into the third important German case - Just Plain Confused. After exchanging as much irrelevant and pointless information we could in a language neither of us really could understand, Ess-Tset cast around for the right words: "Many bitte!" Which translates to: "Much please!" Though, thinking about it at the time, I realised the German word for thanks had gone right out of my mind, too. (Danke. It's Danke.)

Now, if you'll excuse me - I have a bad case of diaeresis and I have to go to the toilet.

Proety

Lines written after seeing a headline in a local newspaper

Action group wants facts! 

Facts group wants action. 

Faction calls for tax. 

Group wants satisfaction. 

Action Faction acts. 

Hot Faction-Faction action! 

Who wants action facts? 

The Faction-Faction-Faction. 

Action group wants fiction! 

Faction acts on group. 

Group wants facts on faction. 

Faction head goes floop! 

An essay demonstrating that cake is better than biscuits

INTRODUCTION
Cake is better than biscuits. I maintain this, having had extensive experience eating both cake and biscuits, singly and alongside one another for comparative effect. Despite the obvious truth of this maxim, it is but poorly understood in Society At Large. In what follows, I wish to offer a small corrective to this vast general ignorance, in the form of an extensive essay to demonstrate the verifiable and undeniable nature of the proposition that 'cake is better than biscuits'. I will do so PHYSICALLY, taking into account all the dimensions and durations and capacities and velocities and what not; I will do so SYMBOLOGICALLY, with reference to star charts and gematria and so on; and I will do so SUBJECTIVELY, drawing on my own extensive experience. You're welcome.

1. PHYSICS
The superiority of cake over biscuits is clearly demonstrable when we consider that a cake is typically far larger than a biscuit. We may consider its heft, and we may contemplate its satisfying weight, as we hold it in our hand prior to eating it. Such consideration excites the desire and thus, when we actually do eat cake, our pleasure is all the greater. Of course, we may consider a biscuit in the same way too, but there is much less of it for us to appreciate, and therefore, the appreciation when it goes into our mouth is much less.

Biscuits, of course, ought to be appreciated not as one phenomenon, but en masse; here, however, they present us with another difficulty. Though we may have many biscuits, they all taste the same. Cake, however, is a much more variable phenomenon: one rarely has two cakes the same in the house. Therefore, though there are less cakes, typically, than biscuits, they regularly excite the palate with a wide array of flavours, and impress us with their differential nature.

Also, cakes are soft and cuddly, whereas biscuits are much harder and less susceptible to cuddling.*

2. SYMBOLS
Cake, unlike biscuits, is typically round. Biscuits often aspire to a round shape but have this Platonic roundness regularly interfered by crumbly bits and splodges and the like, as they are not often made in a mould. Cakes, as they more closely approximate the geometric symbol of perfection, are clearly better than biscuits in this respect.

It is also obvious that cake is the crowning glory of many parties; whereas no party yet concluded with the triumphant and grandiose arrival of a plateful of biscuits. As the saying goes, the cherry on top of the table with the icing on top of it is the cake, and that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

3. SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSIONS
Cake is also a greater phenomenon than biscuits for a very simple, undeniable reason: I am eating cake right now, and not biscuits. It is a truth universally acknowledged that the cake of Right Now is better than the biscuits of Whenever The Hell I'm Going To Make Them Next. As this is so obvious and undeniable, no further argument need be entered into here.

RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION
In conclusion, cake is better than something something something OM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM.

*Not that one regularly cuddles cakes or biscuits, but this ought to be set down here as a favour to those who are considering cuddling various items of food. 

How to debate hypothetical vegans

Earlier today, down at the shops, just as I was simultaneously buying an ice cream (Cornetto, thanks for asking) and planning a daredevil escape from the environmentalists walking up and down the street carrying clipboards (crossing the road while they were looking the other way), a devious plan struck me.

The plan was this: I would buy one of the environmentalists - an ice cream.

No no, hear me out! The conversation, as I imagined it in my head, would take place something like this:

ENVIRONMENTALIST: Hi, can I speak to you for just a min.... 

TIM: Would you like an ice cream? 

A devastating counter-attack, I think you'll agree. Of course, being environmentalists, I realised as I thought about this stratagem, they would probably have to say...

ENVIRONMENTALIST: Oh no thanks, I'm vegan. But how lovely of you to ask! 

TIM: OH WELL I WILL HAVE TO HAVE IT FOR MYSELF THEN HOW SAD*. 

Brilliant, c'est non? But things were about to get very hairy, I realised, in this hypothetical situation:

ENVIRONMENTALIST: Great anyway so on this pamphlet I have here....

But don't worry! My defence is rock solid!

TIM: Mm mmm MMMM THIS ICE CREAM IS SO GOOD! YOU WOULD LOVE IT IF YOU WERE ALLOWED TO HAVE ANY OF IT! OH MY! MMMMM! 

But then, as I was thinking about this pleasing scenario, it suddenly struck me that maybe my planning and scheming was all wrong. What if the environmentalist actually did want the ice cream? And stood there - eating it - in front of me?** True - they wouldn't be able to talk to me anymore about whatever it is they were talking about. But they would be eating my ice cream!

Outwitted by hypothetical non-vegan environmentalists. Well, that was a first.

So in the end I just bought one fucking ice cream and nicked across the fucking road while they were looking the other way.

*cf Psalm 23, v. 5: "Thou preparedest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.... my cup runneth over". 
**Psalm 23, v. 5 again! 

Sunday poem

Half a league, half a league, 

Half a league backwards,

Boldly they rode and well

Out of the jaws of hell,

Stormed back from shot and shell,

Floundered and blundered,

Ours not to do or - no,

Maybe we will not go,

See you - next year or so,

Rode the five hundred. 

- from the Discharge of the Light Brigade, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Lines about the Grand Final that don't go anywhere in particular...

It's AFL Grand Final time and I haven't been this excited since Phar Lap won the Ashes against the South Sydney Rabbitohs.

But we'll get to Tiddlywinks in a moment.

Football! The game that turns the champions into men! Or occasionally women, depending on their gender preferences.

The three stages of football: someone's going to win! Someone's winning! Someone has won!

(But lining up for a big kick - do footballers ever get an itchy nose?)

The end (told you I wasn't going anywhere in particular).

How can it bee: an existential dilemma

From time to time I have attempted to upload pictures of our bees to the internet, though not with much success. This has caused something of an existential dilemma on my part: if a picture of something doesn't appear on the net, does it actually exist? What would humans be if you took all the selfies away from them? Well, the same thing happens with bees. So people would be forgiven for being justifiably suspicious of our claims to have bees. This, then, is an attempt to rectify that dilemma.

Here is an unconvincing picture of a guard bee that was hanging around the kitchen window and which you probably won't notice anyway because of the cow in the background. For short, let's just call it 'Unconvincing picture of a bee'.

Unconvincing picture of a bee

As if that wasn't convincing enough, this one time, I got stung in the forehead, and it was totally from our own bees and not from some other bee or wasp or anything like that. Here is a picture of what I looked like after I got stung although it doesn't actually have any bee in it. For short, I call it 'Picture that doesn't actually have a bee in it'.

Picture that doesn't actually have a bee in it

And, to wrap things up, here is a generic stock photo image of a a bee hive that no-one uses anymore. I call it 'Skep', because that's what it is. We certainly don't use skeps at our house, but I've just thrown it in there anyway to make my case more thorough and logically consistent. Also, it looks nice.

Skep